Sunday, March 3

FREE TO AIR

Dig 1940, ABC1, 6pm

JULES Hudson, the fresh-faced presenter from Escape to the Country, is also an archaeologist. Who knew? And, as it turns out, he's also pretty engaging and articulate when it comes to explaining events from the past. In the first episode of this new series, Hudson is digging holes in northern France, recovering bits of Luftwaffe hardware and relating some of the history of the early part of World War II. Necessarily, it is a superficial skate across the horrors of the time, but Hudson does a good job in bringing them alive.

Dr Philip Rees is one of the doctors at Great Ormond Street.

Great Ormond Street, ABC2, 8.30pm

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IN GENERAL, reality shows are little more than advertising disguised as cut-price soap operas. Great Ormond Street is real. Gut-wrenchingly, emotionally, can't-sleep-for-thinking-about-it real. This episode revolves around the work of the heart-transplant team at the leading children's hospital. The children, their parents and the doctors are largely left to tell their own stories, giving the program a raw intensity. Who could fail to be moved by the sight of a surgeon opening up the chest of a two-year-old? Or by a conversation between doctors and the parents of an 11-year-old boy in which they discuss how long their son is likely to live after a transplant? Then there is the irony that, for the toddlers on Ladybird Ward to be given a chance at life, another child of about the same age has to be snatched from his or her parents in a sudden accident. Just like the term ''reality TV'', ''inspiring'' is a much overused word, but there is inspiration to be derived from the stoicism with which children face their situation.

Lyndey Milan's Taste of Ireland, 7Two, noon

THE title tells you exactly what to expect. Veteran foodie Lyndey Milan wanders around the west of Ireland listening to yarns from the locals, doing a bit of cooking and watching other chefs do their thing. Inevitably, this is all done to the accompaniment of traditional Celtic music, as well as Milan's own, rather stilted, narration. Just like large parts of Ireland, the show is a little like stepping back in time to an era before the obsession with recasting food and cooking as competition, science experiment or status symbol. This is the TV equivalent of comfort food - predictable and ritualised - and, sometimes, comfort food is exactly what you need.

Kevin McCloud's Man Made Home, ABC1, 7.30pm

THIS is the last in a four-part series in which Kev and his mates lark about in the woods. The central conceit - to build a cabin on 0.8 hectares by ''making and doing rather than shopping and consuming'' - could, in other hands, become rather too po-faced and worthy. But the always affable and entertaining McCloud makes the project much lighter and much more … fun. One suspects he would be a good teacher, bringing to proceedings just the right amount of eccentricity, plus a very British capacity for self-deprecation. Then there is his boundless enthusiasm. A repurposed 737 jet engine casing (he turns it into a spa) is described as ''gorgeous'' and ''woodland bling''. The final stages of the project are completed with a gang of helpers, including the delightful ladies from the local weavers' guild. Finishing touches include a monolithic drop-down verandah that requires Heath Robinson-esque ingenuity to raise and lower and, for reasons not quite clear, a kimono-style dressing gown made from alpaca wool. It being England, it also pours for days, turning the site into a quagmire, not that this dampens Kev's enthusiasm.

NICK GALVIN

PAY TV

American Colony: The Hutterites, National Geographic, 8.30pm

THE Hutterite colony near Lewistown, Montana, comes across as being a kind of Amish-lite - there's a bit of drinking and swearing (among the menfolk, at least), there are a lot more mod cons, and a lot more contact with the outside world. But this comparative laxity extends only so far. On more important things, the word of the Hutterite religious elders is law, and to disobey it is to be exiled from the colony and shunned by family and friends. The cruelty of this is made clear tonight. The bright young Tammy turns 17 and so must leave her outside school - which she loves - and go to work in the colony kitchen. Well, that or be banished from the only home she has known. It's no choice at all, and the only protest Tammy can make is to defy the colony by going to school for one more day. Her mother's elation and relief at her acquiescence is sickening. American Colony has been clouded in controversy, with some of the Hutterites who appear in it claiming it was partly scripted and an unfair representation. Executive producer Jeff Collins contended the disavowals were made under threat of excommunication. Whatever the truth of it, the depressing basics of Hutterite life don't seem to be in dispute.

Happily Never After, CI, 7.30pm

A FAIRLY standard murder-doco series that doesn't benefit from the silly fairytale trappings and voice-over, nor from the carry-on of psychologist Wendy Walsh, who tries to emote every word that comes out of her mouth as if she were in her first amateur drama workshop.

When I Knew, Bio, 9.30pm

Filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (Becoming Chaz, Party Monster) ask people when they realised they were gay.

The Soup, E!, 8.30pm

A thoroughly enjoyable round-up of the week's televised idiocy. But there's no need for Joel McHale to be so unkind to Honey Boo Boo's mum.

MTV Live Vibrations: Carly Rae Jepsen, MTV Live, 10pm

Carly Rae Jepsen performs live in London.

BRAD NEWSOME

MOVIES

The Yellow Handkerchief (2008), M Drama/Romance (pay TV), 8.30pm

THE late-50s Brett (William Hurt) is released after six years in jail for an unspecified crime. He sits writing a note in a general store, wondering where to head next and how to get there. A few feet away, a nerdy teenage boy (Les Miserables' Eddie Redmayne) is looking for out-of-date disposable cameras he can get on the cheap. Outside, a 15-year-old girl (Kristen Stewart) is having an argument with the momentary love of her life. We know intuitively that these three people will get together and that, in the great tradition of American narrative, they will teach other lessons. This sweet and gentle film celebrates a protective male love of women and the wisdom children have to give adults - if society will allow. One lesson is how acceptance of others as they are is far more powerful than love.

Good Will Hunting (1997), Gem, 8.30pm

AS YOUNG men, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon wrote a script about a Massachusetts Institute of Technology janitor (Matt Damon) with a genius for mathematics, and a psychologist (Robin Williams) who helps him find his way. Affleck's happy affair with Oscars had begun.